Page 247 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet
Inside, nestled in a bed of tissue paper so fine it seemed to disintegrate against my fingers, was a black and white diamond necklace. Three huge diamonds were ringed in a halo of smaller black gems that glinted like the night sky around the stars.
I lost my breath to its beauty then again when I read Dante’s card.
Black and white and red, lottatrice mia. The colors of our life and our love.
I looked up with teared-filled eyes at the dinner table filled with almost everyone Dante and I loved, Tore at one head of the table and me in Dante’s place at the other. My fingers trembled as I lifted my glass of Montepulciano wine in a toast that everyone echoed robustly.
“To Dante.”
“To Dante!”
There was only one reason I went to jail.
Elena was right when she assumed those friends in high places could get me off with a hefty fine for bail jumping instead of having to pay with incarceration.
But it was too good of an opportunity to waste.
Oh, I could have done it another way.
Hired someone or asked a favor.
But this required a personal touch.Mytouch.
After all, it was my wife he’d abused and turned against herself.
I owed it to all three of us to exact this retribution myself.
It took longer than I wanted it to.
I missed Christmas and New Year’s Eve with my beautiful new wife and our family. Lying on a thin mattress on a metal bunk bed in a six-by-eight-foot cell as a six-foot-five man was uncomfortable as hell. The food was crap; the company was worse. My cellmate was a guy who had his tongue cut out by another inmate for snitching, and the group of Aryan neo-Nazis didn’t like my swarthiness the moment they clapped eyes on me.
There were Made Men inside, a small gang of them and others who had joined up with other gangs inside. I told them not to bother with me because I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. Though I pulled three of them aside that day to let them know I’d need them soon.
But none of that mattered.
I kept to myself, and no one disturbed me because I was a big guy and didn’t cause problems.
I just waited.
With decreasing patience.
Because I knew it would all be worth it in the end.
Finally, two weeks after my incarceration, the transport van arrived, and four new prisoners entered B block.
One was a Chinese man with tattoos all over his face, only the tip of his nose and chin were inkless, and one was a fairly handsome Black man who was instantly welcomed by people he seemed to know in one of the drug gangs.
The last was a slim, pale-skinned brunette man who looked as green as the jumpsuit we had to wear in here.
I tried to see him as Elena had as a girl, if he was handsome or worthy of her in any way.
He was not.
Abrutto figio di puttanainside and out.
“Ugly little guy,” the inmate beside me grunted as he took stock of the new arrivals. “He’ll be someone’s bitch boy within the week.”
I didn’t argue even though I knew he wouldn’t live that long.
